Mid Major Hoops from Boston to Charleston

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You know about The Great Wall in front of Northeastern. Any team that downs Larrañaga, Duke, and North Carolina in consecutive days is special, and Notre Dame is no exception. And while Northeastern’s task will be extremely trying, the Huskies can make things interesting if they play just their game. 14 seeds win these games 15% of the time, a stat that’s been affirmed three times in the past five years.

Here’s what we know about Notre Dame: Mike Brey’s team boasts one of the nation’s most explosive offenses. The Fighting Irish scores 1.22 points per possession, trailing only Wisconsin in adjusted offensive efficiency. The staples of this excellence come in the form of a nation-leading 58.6% effective field goal percentage and a 14.4% turnover rate, good for third in D-I. Notre Dame is 18-0 when scoring at least 1.18 points per possession.

Now, the roll call.

Senior Jerian Grant spearheads the offense. The All-American guard has rebounded from a season curtailed by academic shortcomings to average 16.8 points and 6.6 assists per game. He’s a big strong guard who’s an absolute force in the lane. Pat Connaughton, Demetrius Jackson, Steve Vasturia, and V.J. Beachem can absolutely stroke it from three, with the first pair scoring over 11 points per game.

Zach Auguste is Notre Dame’s skillfully efficient center, and if you watched any Notre Dame games over the last three weeks, you’re probably familiar with the undersized big man frosh Bonzie Colson.

This is the part where I tell you how I think Northeastern can keep pace with the Irish.

Notre Dame is largely average defensively, and such disparities between offense and defense can be a death sentence in March. The Irish do a decent job defending the three-point line. Last Friday, the Irish let Jahlil Okafor do whatever he wanted in the paint, but refused to relinquish open outside shots to Quinn, Tyus, and Co.

Northeastern doesn’t have any future NBA Lotto picks, but I’d expect Mike Brey to once again sell out to guard the perimeter against a Northeastern team that’s shot 38.8% (24th in D-I) from three this season.

So I’m thinking this will be a Reggie Spencer game, because Northeastern needs to attack the heart of a Notre Dame defense that frequently plays small lineups featuring the 6’5” Connaughton at the four. Perhaps if Northeastern’s bigs can get things flowing towards the hoop, they can get a few early fouls on Auguste, and get into a shallow Notre Dame bench.

I say a shallow Notre Dame bench because (like Northeastern) Notre Dame is bottom five in D-I in percentage of minutes played by bench players. Okay, so we might need to send Lucas Goodwin to a data center to find what Litos wrote about the (in)significance of that same subject once upon a time. And given how good Vasturia is and how well Colson has played, you could say Notre Dame has an advantage here.

But we saw how well Spencer, Caleb Donnelly, and Devon Begley played in Baltimore. If that trio can carry some of that success to Pittsburgh, Northeastern might have an advantage here.

To summarize: I want to see Northeastern attacking the lane, crashing the boards, and forcing Mike Brey to rely on his depth-less frontcourt. These things are all much easier said than done — many have tried and failed this season. There’s a reason the Fighting Irish is 29-5.

But Bill Coen has dragged this team on holiday roadies to New Orleans, San Juan, and California over the past 18 months, and it’s all been in preparation for this exact moment. The game won’t be too big for a Northeastern squad playing with house money.

And for a Notre Dame program that’s only won two Tournament games since a 2003 Sweet 16 run, there’s a bit of pressure to perform.

Can the CAA force another high-powered Notre Dame team into the wrong side of a rockfight like it did in 2010?

I spent the first few moments of the CAA Championship sitting in traffic. It’s not uncommon for me to miss the beginning of 7:00 games, as I routinely find myself stuck in the I-66/Route 7 merge around that time.

But this past Monday’s commute was more enjoyable than most. After Chad Dukes instructed listening ears to roll out the trashcans, the Westwood One broadcast switched to a certain Baltimore venue that I had visited less than 24 hours before. Suddenly, I wasn’t so worried about being stuck in traffic.

I hit my exit as starting fives were announced, and the game tipped off when I was just one turn away from my house. But stoplights kept me from pushing the gas pedal.

And all that short while, Northeastern was pressing its pedal to the floor.

Northeastern went up two, then four, and had taken a 10-0 lead just two minutes and 15 seconds into the game.

And all the while I was still sitting in my car.

Of course, there’s nothing damning about falling 10 points behind in the first three minutes of a college basketball game. That’s like heading into the bottom of the first inning in a 2-0 hole. But going into the weekend, the big question concerned which Northeastern would show up: the team that picked up the CAA’s best pair of road wins at Richmond and Florida State, or the team that was stomped out at UMass the day before Thanksgiving.

The consistently promising group that flashed major potential in Puerto Rico last year, or the guys who couldn’t make big free throws in nearly every game thereafter.

The squad that so easily dispatched of William & Mary and Hofstra in the regular season, or the the one that looked uninspired against Delaware and Elon.

It wasn’t quite so cut and dry — William & Mary had moments where it knotted the game up. And despite an abysmal showing for most of the second half, William & Mary still made a late 16-0 charge to make things interesting in the final 90 seconds.

But this is something we could see coming. Northeastern flashed this potential in ’12-’13. The Huskies had to find new lynchpins in ’13-’14 after Jon Lee and Joel Smith graduated. Then seniors Lee and Smith had declared themselves “the head(s)” of the program, but were quick to render Ford as “the neck.”

Last year was a growing year, but the signs of future success were present. With Eatherton finally eligible after transferring in from St. Francis (PA) and Reggie Spencer already in tow, Coen had assembled his best frontcourt to date.

Thus, I’ve been mentally preparing to write this article for 16 months, after watching Eatherton and Spencer take it to Georgetown in San Juan. We lauded Coen’s willingness to push his team to outside of its comfort zones then, and notice how it’s paying off now.

It took 90 conference games to set the table for Baltimore, and eight fallen chefs to prepare the feast.

Tonight, Northeastern and William & Mary get to eat the entrée. We know only one of them will be invited for dessert.

In the clashes that determined who would cook and who would dine, we saw a paradigm of the passion that goes into the prep work, and the validation of our adoration for college basketball.

The Tribe’s last two quests for an NCAA Tournament berth ended when Marcus Thornton’s 3-pointers rimmed out. On Sunday afternoon, it was the three-point shot he didn’t take that allowed William & Mary to give it another go.

Thornton passed up a well-contested jumper and kicked the ball to Daniel Dixon. The sophomore guard with the gimpy hamstring coolly knocked down a corner 3-pointer with 0.8 seconds left to complete William & Mary’s electrifying 92-91 double overtime victory.

We hear coaches say it all the time, but these close games always comes down to someone making a winning play. For a contest with two overtimes, nine ties, and 12 lead changes, that certainly held true.

Northeastern’s 78-71 win against UNCW didn’t come down to last-second heroics, but the game wasn’t lacking in star performances.

Craig Ponder made several big plays throughout the game, and Jordon Talley still got the rim at will. Bill Coen will have summer nightmares when he realizes he’s got to face that kid for three more seasons.

But the Huskies didn’t let Addison Spruill and Freddie Jackson get anything easy, and Scott Eatherton and David Walker spearheaded a Husky offense that scored 1.2 points per possession while committing just two turnovers in the second half.

The tumultuous weekend left us with a Monday might rubber match between Northeastern and William & Mary. The cool thing about the new-look CAA is that most of these schools haven’t danced for many years. Northeastern hasn’t boogied since 1991. None of the players on the team were alive then.

And you know William & Mary’s been taking dancing lessons for the past decade in preparation.

Scott Eatherton began to assert himself as the game wore on, and posted a game-high 11 points in the first half. Northeastern held a 14-point advantage for points in the paint. UNCW hasn’t had much success getting good drives toward the hoop.

We’re about an hour from finding out who will battle William & Mary for a chance to dance.

William & Mary got off to an auspicious start, as Marcus Thornton and Omar Prewitt used a series of cuts and three-point bombs to build a 21-11 lead less than 10 minutes into the game.

At that point, the W&M offense got sloppy, leading to several runouts for Hofstra. Juan’ya Green (11 points) and Rokas Gustys led Hofstra on a 15-1 run that turned the 10-point deficit into a four-point advantage.

The last five minutes of the half was The Marcus Thornton Show. The CAA Player of the Year banged home a trio of treys to put William & Mary back on top.

Thornton and Prewitt combined for 27 points, and helped the Tribe build its 35-32 halftime lead.

For Hofstra to keep this one close, it needs to recommit to getting the ball inside. The Tribe had no answer for Moussa Kone in the early going. Kone played just six minutes due to foul trouble, but kept the Pride in the game when nothing else was working.

William & Mary shot 50% from the field, and 41.7% from three. Hofstra was just 3-of-13 from downtown in the first half, and has to avoid trying to match the Tribe shot for shot.

Eight and a half hours after the first game got going, Northeastern and Delaware gave the crowd the competitive game it so desperately sought.

The Huskies prevailed in the 67-64 tug of war. Monté Ross said it had the atmosphere of a championship game — a sentiment that’s confirmed by this graph.

We know that basketball is a game of runs, and what made this one fun was that individual players took their turns dominating for two and three minutes at a time.

It started with Northeastern swingman Quincy Ford, who scored nine of Northeastern’s first 14 points. Then teammate Zach Stahl got rolling, battling for position and converting several looks within five feet of the bucket. The two Huskies were tied for the team-high 11 points at halftime.

For the Blue Hens, the first half of the game was The Kory Holden Show. Perhaps he went extra hard to prove himself as CAA ROY Elijah Bryant’s equal. Holden knocked down a bevy of runners and 3-pointers en route to 16 first-half points.

Both teams shot 54.5% in the first half, and a late David Walker 3-pointer gave Northeastern a 35-31 lead at the intermission.

After Ford hit a 3-pointer on Northeastern’s first possession of the second half, Northeastern had it’s biggest lead of the game. Then, it was Cazmon Hayes’ turn to make a personal run as the Delaware sophomore, who committed two fouls and three turnovers in six first-half minutes, scored nine consecutive points in a 9-2 run that knotted the game at 40.

From there, it was more of the same. Northeastern ended a five-minute scoreless drought with seven points in 57 seconds. That gave the Huskies their largest lead (52-44), but Delaware’s Maurice Jeffers and Marvin King-Davis provided the counterpunch. Northeastern rallied to within one with 2:52 to play.

Delaware had a chance to take the lead, but a question five-second call on Holden gave the ball back to Northeastern. Holden kept Delaware within one possession, but Walker hit four free throws in the final 14 seconds.

Chivarsky Corbett’s potential game-tying 3-pointer was no good, and Northeastern got revenge against the team that knocked it out of last year’s CAA Tournament.

In an utterly dominant second-half performance, UNCW shot 65.4% (17-of-26) from the field en route to a 79-53 slaughter.

UNCW’s seniors led the way, just as they have all season. Cedrick Williams posted a 19-13 double-double, tying teammate Freddie Jackson for the game-high 19 points. Charleston had no answer for UNCW’s precise cuts to the hoop.

Charleston shot 32.8% on the game. Joe Chealey led CofC with 12 points, 11 of which came in the first half. Freshman Cameron Johnson hit a trio of 3-pointers in the second half.

There’s not much to say about this one. UNCW made it look easy. The Seahawks come to play every time they take the floor. We can’t expect them to shoot 53.4% each game, but when their defense is up to its usual standard, they can beat a lot of teams when they’re hitting in the low-40s.

UNCW will face the winner of Northeastern-Delaware in Sunday’s 5:00 game.